why won't my recorded TV shows show up on my external monitor?

October 24, 2006 6:49 PM

I have a laptop with flatscreen plugged into it, making for one large monitor encompassing the laptop and the external monitor. I've recently started recording some TV shows to watch at more convenient times. For some reason when I go to play the recording back, whether it be with windows media player or the InterVideo program that came with the USB tuner, I only get a picture on the laptop monitor. If I try and and move it over to the other (larger) external monitor i still get the sound playing fine, but the picture is just black. I can watch live TV on either monitor, it's only the video playback that has a problem. any thoughts?
posted by sorindome to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Many laptop video cards will only display fully-accelerated (overlayed) video on the primary display. I have a similar issue with my Matrox Pahelia triple-head.
posted by krisjohn at 7:14 PM on October 24, 2006

1. You have two displays, not one large monitor.

2. Some laptop graphics chips only support video and 3D acceleration on the built in display.

3. Very often, on multi-display systems, if you start video playback on one display and move it to the other display you will get a blank picture. You need to move the video app to the monitor you want to view video on before you start playback. Sometimes it helps to move the app, then restart it, so that it comes up on the second display.
posted by b1tr0t at 7:20 PM on October 24, 2006

You can also try disabling video acceleration for the video in Windows Media Player. I'm running 11, so I'm not sure if the option is called the same name in WMP 10, but check under Tools > Options > Performance for a setting that will let you disable video acceleration for video playback. Hopefully this, combined with b1tr0t's suggestion of starting playback on the second display, will help.
posted by mikeyk at 7:33 PM on October 24, 2006

Try VLC media player. You can configure it not to use the overlay.

http://www.videolan.org
posted by doomtop at 8:12 PM on October 24, 2006

Seems like I have better luck if I change the "primary" display. Go to Display properties --> Settings --> Advanced. Then click the Displays tab. There's a #1 and #2 (on my PC anyway...). Switch 'em and see if that works.
posted by powpow at 8:40 PM on October 24, 2006

I had the same problem and found that trying different resolution settings on the secondary monitor fixed it.
posted by SAC at 12:31 AM on October 25, 2006

I've seen some commercial DVD software that won't let you play protected content on any display but the primary, to prevent piracy.
On a laptop I'm not sure if it has a way of knowing if a device is connected or the built-in display, but I have run into your same problem and the solution was to wither get differnt DVD software or don't play protected content- even setting the TV as the primary display and using windows on it with the laptop screen showing nothing didn't work.
posted by Four Flavors at 1:28 PM on October 25, 2006